You Know What They Say

2025 is… well, you don’t need me to tell you it’s been tumultuous. Like everyone else, I’ve made plans, watched them crumble, made new ones, crossed my fingers, and stress-eaten my weight in Trader Joe’s Scandinavian Swimmers.

Back in January, when we were all slightly less bedraggled, I was excited to be working on a newly commissioned play for Paul Bunyan Playhouse.

Weeks later, when I had nearly half the script done, they announced the cancellation of their entire 2025 season. (They’re planning some necessary building renovations.)

I’ve tucked that script away for now, but plan to come back to it later when the dust of some other projects settles.

On the plus side, I’m about to close out my Tennessee Playwrights Studio fellowship with the live-streamed reading of my new play Roberta at the Bottom of the Pool, which I’ve been working on since January of 2024. It’s directed by Josh Inocalla and performed by Nashville actors Jarvis Bynum, Jack E. Chambers, Marissa Hoisington, and Jennifer Whitcomb-Oliva. After the read, viewers can stick around for a discussion with panelist playwrights Preston Crowder, Kate McGunagle, and Amina McIntyre.

It’s the most complicated thing I’ve ever written, because in a lot of ways it’s about the fallibility of memory, but also secrets, regular lies, and lies by omission. A very tricky tapestry to weave. (Are tapestries woven? Much like an AI chatbot, I’m not gonna check whether it’s true—I’m just gonna say it.)

You can stream the read tomorrow, Friday, 5/30 at 7pm CT by registering HERE. (Registration is free!) I suggest you don’t wait until two minutes before it starts to register or you could miss the beginning!

After the cancellation of Over a Barrel at PBP, I have to admit that part of my disappointment was about not having a show in my home state of Minnesota this year, as I’d planned. So I was thrilled when my new play Sorry About The Galvanism was chosen by the Duluth Playhouse for their Women in Theatre New Play Festival!

Sorry About The Galvanism is a comedy about the nature of the creative brain and the horror of writing in a group.

On a gloomy evening in 1816, near Lake Geneva, Switzerland, four writers (Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and Doctor Polidori) try to quiet their boredom by writing scary stories. Things go off the rails when one of them dies, and Mary decides to test the theory of galvanism—using electric shocks to reanimate a dead body—on their friend—with outrageous results.

You can see the world premiere of SATG alongside seven other new one-acts Friday, June 6th, 7:30pm at Duluth Playhouse’s NorShor Theatre! Tickets available here.

Approaching the halfway point of 2025, I anticipate more obstacles, hopefully small wins, and several more bags of Scandinavian Swimmers. But if I’ve learned anything—it’s that I simply don’t know.